House Caucus Seeks Pritt Expulsion After Child Exploitation Charge

CHARLESTON – A supermajority within the 91-member House of Delegates Republican caucus are calling on Gov. Patrick Morrisey to call a special session so the House can begin proceedings to expel Del. Elliott Pritt, R-Fayette, following federal charges regarding inappropriate contact with a child.

Meanwhile, lawmakers are also pushing back against opponents of legislation aimed at protecting children during child welfare investigations due to Pritt’s defense of the bill on the final night of the 2026 session.

In a letter to Morrisey dated Thursday, 81 members of the 91-member House Republican caucus asked the governor to call a special session coinciding with legislative interim meetings scheduled the second week of August.

“... The undersigned members, constituting the required three fifths of the membership of the West Virginia House of Delegates, request that you call the House of Delegates into an extraordinary session on Monday, August 10, 2026, for the limited purpose of considering and acting upon a resolution to expel Delegate D. Elliott Pritt from membership in the West Virginia House of Delegates.”

According to a criminal complaint filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, Pritt was charged with one count of enticement of a minor. According to an affidavit from a Homeland Security Investigation special agent, Elliott allegedly used several social media platforms, including Roblox and Snapchat, to coerce a minor into illegal sexual activity.

Elliott, who was first elected to the House as a Democrat in 2022 and switch to a Republican in 2023, is a teacher in the Fayette County public school system. According to the complaint, the contact started last year when the girl, now age 15, was in middle school. By the end of her eighth-grade year, Pritt was telling the girl he loved her, later sending explicit photos of himself to the girl and coercing the girl to do the same.

Investigators said the relationship between the minor and Pritt became physical, with the minor meeting Pritt in his classroom at Oak Hill High School in late 2025 to engage in sexual activity. While no physical contact occurred in 2026, Pritt continued to exchange messages with the girl, urging her to not tell anyone.”

“Because of me it would be very much not be ... low key,” Pritt alleged wrote to the girl. “It would be in the news. It would be awful. For both of us. And I would lose my entire life.”

Article 6 Section 19 of the state Constitution empowers the governor to call the legislature into special session by proclamation or if three-fifths of both the House and state Senate apply to the governor. While both the House and Senate would be called in, only the House would need to convene.

Article 6 Section 25 allows each body to expel a member by a two-thirds vote, an action that hasn’t occurred in the legislature since the 1970s, when former Logan County state senator W. Bernard Smith after being found guilty of federal election crimes as part of the infamous Logan County Five.

According to reporting by West Virginia Watch and WV MetroNews, a law passed in 2025 would prevent the Fayette County Republican Executive Committee from replacing Pritt on the November general election ballot if he chooses to resign, something that House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay, numerous other lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle, and Del. Josh Holstein, chairman of West Virginia Republican Party have requested he do.

House Bill 4350, passed by the legislature in 2024, only allows from replacing a party nominee on the general election ballot in the event of a disqualification, such as in the instance the candidate is convicted of a felony. Pritt has been arraigned but has not yet pleaded or been convicted. If convicted, Pritt could face a minimum mandatory sentence of 10 years in a federal facility.

Pritt is one of several lawmakers who fought unsuccessfully on the last night of the 2026 session for the passage of Raylee’s Law, which was amended into House Bill 5537 dealing with making changes to education laws. The Raylee’s Law amendment would have prohibited a county board of education from approving a request for home instruction for an enrolled student when there is a pending child abuse or neglect investigation.

Raylee’s Law is named for Raylee Jolynn Browning, a child in Oak Hill who died in 2018 due to abuse by her father, Marty Browning. According to press reports, Raylee had been pulled from public school by her father, who was sentenced, along with his girlfriend and girlfriend’s sister, in 2022 after being convicted of child neglect causing death.

The Senate amended HB 5537 the night before the end of the session to include Raylee’s Law, but the House did not take up the amended bill until the final hour of the 60-day session on March 14, debating amendments for 45 minutes until adopting a watered down version. However, the bill did not make the midnight deadline to be reconsidered in the Senate.

"We have an opportunity here tonight to do something to protect children. We have tried this for four years. If we amend this bill or change it in any way this bill dies tonight," Pritt said during the debate in the House March 14 over amendments he believed would weaken Raylee’s Law.

Despite Raylee’s Law having no effect on families currently home schooling their children, advocates for home school families have vocally opposed Raylee’s Law for years. In a post on social media Wednesday, the West Virginia Home Educators Association (WVHEA) quickly latched onto Pritt’s arrest to again protest any future attempts to propose Raylee’s Law.

“Delegate Pritt was among the legislators who advocated for legislation that would have limited a parent’s ability to immediately withdraw a child from public school under certain circumstances.,” wrote Roy Ramey, president of WVHEA. “The allegations in this case do not determine public policy. However, they do reinforce why WVHEA has consistently argued that parents must retain the authority to act immediately when they reasonably believe their child may be in danger while allegations are thoroughly investigated.”

In its statement, WVHEA contends that because predators can exist in any educational setting, public policy must prioritize the authority of parents to protect their children during active investigations. But longtime supporters of Raylee’s Law in the legislature said Pritt’s alleged crimes should not be an excuse to back away from passing additional protections for children.

“Crimes against children are not Republican or Democrat, public school or homeschool. They are crimes,’ said House Minority Whip Shawn Fluharty, D-Ohio, who has introduced a version of Raylee’s law for years. “Anyone attempting to turn this into a political talking point should be ashamed of themselves. It is disgusting to see anyone try to exploit the alleged victimization of a child for political purposes.”

State Sen. Ryan Weld, R-Brooke, offered the amendment that added Raylee’s Law to HB 5537 earlier this year. He said had Raylee’s Law been in place, it would not have allowed Pritt to file a CPS report against the girl’s parents as a mandatory reporter in order to keep the girl in public school to continue abusing her.

“As I have read the criminal complaint against him and some of the other reporting about it, it doesn’t appear that he had at any point in time made a report of abuse and neglect against the parents of his alleged victim in an attempt to keep her in school so that he could continue to sexually abused and victimize her,” Weld said. “If that were the case, then there would obviously be a connection (with Raylee’s Law) that was so prominent the last couple of days of session.”

“I don’t think that the two issues are connected,” Weld continued. “It appears – again, if the allegations in the complaint are true – that he is nothing more than just another monster in a long line of child abusers and child molesters that exist, unfortunately, in every corner of our society.”

Fluharty said the charges against Pritt were reason for lawmakers to double their efforts to pass laws aimed at standing up for children against potential predators.

“If these allegations are true, the focus should be on protecting children, supporting the victim, and allowing the justice system to do its work,” Weld said. “Raylee’s Law strengthens protections for children and increases accountability for those who prey upon them. This exactly why we need more protections on the books, not less.”